A “Healthier” Carrot Cake

We both love carrot cake. Who doesn’t. It’s a sweet tasting cake with creamy frosting and – best of all – it contains carrots! So in some strange way this cake must also be healthy!?

Well, it also usually contains large amounts of sugar, butter and flour, so healthy might not be the perfect word to describe it. Unless you replace these ingredients for more natural alternatives. We decided to try it.

So, we took a couple of our favorite carrot cake recipes, mixed them up a bit, removed the sugar, butter and white flour, replaced them with some ingredients that we found appropriate, whipped it together and put it in the oven. And our first try was a disaster! We used apple juice as sweetener and almost not any flour at all, which gave us a compact stonecake with absolutely no taste.

For our second try we sweetened it with bananas and dates (and some honey in the frosting), we used whole-wheat flour and a mild oil instead of butter. And this time it really turned out well. We also used a lot of dried fruit and quite large carrot grates, which made it really chewy and chunky.
Scroll down for the recipe.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Whisk the eggs in a medium sized bowl. Use a hand blender or a blender to mix bananas, dates and oil into a thick cream in another bowl. Sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom and stir it together with the eggs and the banana-cream. Add grated carrots, coconut flakes, walnuts and raisins and stir it until it all comes together.
Pour it into a cake pan and bake for about 40 minutes. Try to stick a toothpick in the centre of the cake, when nothing sticks on it the cake is ready. Let it cool.
Whip together the cream cheese and the honey (bananas or dates would probably also work as sweeteners for the frosting). Add the frosting when the cake is completely cooled of. Serve with roughly chopped hazelnuts or walnuts on the top.

87 Comments

I am always trying to havs a healthier diet. But my work as food photographer it makes everything a bit mote complicated. With tones of delicious unhethy food commisioned from th magazines I shoot for. But I would love to try this cake. Yout blog is really cute.

Hello Cindy, I realize that your post is a few years old but I hope you get this.
YOu said that you “divided the batter into a dozen muffins ”
May I ask at what oven temperature and for how long did you bake the muffins until done?
With thanks.
Anyone else who also did the same, please let me know. Thanks in advance!

I just discovered your blog a few days ago and really enjoy it! We made the blackberry chocolate cake last night and loved it! I’m going to try this recipe tonight and while I was looking it over realized it looks very similar to one that Lamasin Day-Lewis included in her book “Supper for a Song.” There are a lot of great recipes in her book as well.
Thanks again for your recipes!

This looks great!
I love any kind of carroty dessert! I’m a big time “healthy” substituter, and this recipe is looks dang reasonable to me. I don’t have any dates on hand unfortunately, and I’m on a personal mission to “clean out” my cupboards and shelves before I buy more baking goods etc. So I was thinking of replacing the dates with dried figs… what do you think? I don’t think it would change the consistency very much, or at least this is what I choose to think (:
I’ll let you know how it goes!

I have just put this together, ready to go into the oven. This is the most fun and thoughtful recipe I’ve tried so far in my short baking career – I fell in love with it whilst making the banana and date cream. I have added a lot of love into the mix and I’m looking forward to sharing it with my family this evening. M.x

p.s also wanted to say that you have clearly put a lot of love and effort into creating this recipe – you can feel the good energy while putting it together. Thanks for sharing your passion of making lovely and healthy food.

It’s my first time making something from your blog and it turned out great! I was amazed at how sweet it tasted without any sugar. I made a couple of minor alterations though – i used spelt flour instead of wholemeal, i added half a grated apple and used sultanas instead of raisons.

What à divine carrot cake this is! Vw. Because I forgot to add the coconut in the cake mix I decided to add THE coconut flakes in the glazing for which I used mascarpone. And some extra flakes on top iso nuts. Also à nice alternative! Thank you for sharing your food passion!!! Beautiful app as well :-)

For everyone looking for an egg substitute…the version most common on most vegan blogs is to use a ‘flax egg.’ As near as I can tell, this is just soaked flaxseed formed into an egg-shaped ball. I have never tried this method myself, however.

For myself, when I substitute eggs I use about 1/4 tsp each baking soda and powder (sometimes rounded if I want the recipe extra fluffy) and 1/2 cup of any liquid (milk, juice, apple sauce…whatever works with your recipe). An egg provides moisture and a rising agent so you have to make sure to replace both elements.

this looks so healthy that I am tempted to divide the mixture into muffin cups and eat the carrot cake muffins for breakfast (maybe I would make the cream cheese frosting into a filling… hm…).
I found your blog yesterday and it is absolutely beautiful! I really appreciate that you find ways of making healthier versions of desserts. They really don’t have to be so sugary to be delicious. I’m feeling very encouraged to try experimenting with all the alternatives you suggest for white flour, like your spelt-flour pancake-cake. It looks incredible too!

This is a fantastic recipe. It was rapidly eaten by my family who didn’t even notice it was a healthy version of their favourite treat. Highly highly recommend! Now I wouldn’t even consider another carrot cake recipe. This is my first recipe from this great site and it has given me inspiration to try more. Thank you for providing such delicious healthy recipes!

Hello! I was wondering about possibly substituting applesauce for the fresh dates. Do you think this is a possibility? If so, how much do you think would be good to use? Any other suggestions? I have a feeling my grocery doesn’t carry fresh dates unfortunately. Thanks; I can’t wait to try this recipe!

Tried the recipe yesterday for the first time and it was amazing! I didn’t have fresh dates so used dried ones, and the result was still really good. Next time will soak them as Luise recommended. Btw, I love the green kitchen app for iPad…it is not only beautiful, but also makes following the recipe much easier. Well done!

Hi! Thanks for sharing. I want to bake this cake ’cause I think is amazing, but how can I replace the dates? It’s very difficult to find those in lima-Peru… We are very lucky and have a lot of products but dates are hard to find! Thank you!!! :)

Have been looking for the best carrot cake recipe for a while already, and will try this one soon. I was just wondering if the bananas could be replaced with avocado or some other ingredient? I cant stand the taste. Or are they just in there for structure etc.? Great website and app! Thx

I will be giving this a try today……. Looks wonderful. Just for your information though, look up Sarah Wilson – I Quit Sugar..a fantastic read and eye opener as far as where the “baddies” lie in all that we consume…… You will be very interested to see that you still have quite a lot of sugar in this recipe – bananas, dates and honey – all just sugar in a different form – I’m going to try and use Stevia and will let you know the outcome! Keep up the healthy conversions though – every little tweak helps! :)

I love your blog, it’s very inspiring! I’ll try to make this beautiful cake tomorrow. I have gluten intolerance so maybe I can replace the flour with coconut four or almond flour, what do you think? Thanks /Sandra

I really like this cake! Good flavour, nice texture, and a glazing to die for. Well done – definitely a remake :)

I had no sunflower oil, so I used half olive oil and half rape seed oil, and that worked fine. I also replaced 2 eggs with flax seeds and water. Creative cooking when the kitchen cupboards are empty :)

Thanks for this recipe, it’s so nice to make a cake without sugar and butter!! My 3 year old also loved it :-) I used coconut oil instead of sunflower, so delicious!!
Looking forward to trying some other recipe of yours

Luise and David, I have recently found your blog and in the past enjoyed your recipes featured in The Guardian magazine – I am absolutely in love with your recipes, vision, blog, photography and website! Last night we had the beet burgers, they were amazing :-). I love your recipes, but I am unsure about the ‘cup’ measurement. I tend to work in grams and don’t know how much a cup is! It is something that often puts me off making delicious sounding recipes from the net. Can to you give me a translation please, into grams, so that I can make this scrummy sounding carrot cake for my husband’s birthday?

hey…loved ur recipe..a cake without sugar, butter and white flour..what else one needss!!!
gonna bake this cake this weekend..m very new to baking world..so have basic query..the oven i have at my home has max temperature as 250..will that work? how long i should put my cake for baking with this temperature?

Hi,
I recently discovered your blog through a link on the Golubka blog and tried this recipe this very morning – it’s amazing! So delicious and healthy, packed with goodness, and it’s quick and easy to make. Thanks a lot, I’ll definitely be trying more of your recipes. This blog has beautiful pictures by the way.
Lots of love from France!

Thank you for such an awesome recipe. I used equal amounts of all purpose and almond flour, reduced the quantity of spices, used only 2 eggs, did not use oil at all, and added more coconut and a teaspoon of honey to the batter. The cake was moist, sweet, and delicious. That walnuts give a nice crunch. Blending bananas and dates for sweetness is a great idea.

Will this work if i leave out the nuts, coconut and raisins? Or o i need to change the proportions? I’d like to make it for my son’s second birthday but he doesn’t like chunks of anything in cake/bread, so i’d like to keep it a bit simpler. Thanks!!

Was a little concerned that the cake didn’t rise very well, but I guess all fruit cakes are denser than normal. Much better than I expected after seeing it come out the oven, the cake was still nice and moist, and the frosting was delicious! Never thought a sugar free cake could be so tasty! Will be using this recipe from now on for all my carrot cakes :)

Hi there,
this looks wonderful – I was wondering if you think its possible to do a nice version with sweet potatoes (perhaps replacing dates) if that is what you have? (ie, yup, I have a huge glut of sweet potatoes and carrots at the moment!) … I like fluffy carrot cake that is light – so I’m a bit worried the sweet potato will make it all a bit liquid. what do you think? thanks!! In any case I will do this version at somepoint as it looks great. Thanks for all the continuingly beautiful and interesting recipes.

Didn’t quite work for me, somehow. Too much cardamon (half a teaspoon overpowered the cake and left quite an aftertaste in the mouth), and not quite enough natural sweetness. I do very much like the idea though, and will play around with the ingredients. Next time, I’ll likely use very ripe, black bananas to boost the flavour; replace the dates with soaked, dried figs or prunes to up the sweetness levels; and substantially reduce the cardamon to just one or two pods only, or even replace with a small pinch of ground cloves (and increase the cinnamon). I’m wondering if a little malt extract might also lift the flavour. Still better than using refined sugar, though, which I’m desperately trying to cut down on! This has certainly inspired me to experiment more.

I made this cake today, and I am quite pleased with the outcome. It is nice and moist, and the contrast between the spicy sweetness of the cake and the lime in the frosting is lovely.

I may play around with the recipe to find a way to up the sweetness of the batter a tad – maybe with agave syrup – but then again, this may be down to me needing to get weaned off the taste of refined sugar. Now heading for the kitchen for my third serving!

This was wonderful! I loved the taste of each food…flavors not masked by sugar. Thrilled…happy to serve my family and friends a healthy alternative! I used spelt flour and made 1/2 recipe. Baked in muffin tin…made 8 muffins. Thank you again and again! Finally something healthy that not only looks good, but tastes wonderful! Excited to dig into your website!

I made this today and it turned out delicious! Thank you for such an amazingly healthy and non-guilt-inducing carrot cake recipe. :)
To make it gluten free, I used 3/4 cup oat flour and 1/4 cup almond flour, plus a tbsp of arrowroot. The only spices I have are cinnamon and cloves so those went in accordingly, and instead of sunflower oil, I used coconut oil. Those were the changes I made and the cake still ended up moist, sweet [enough for my family ;)], and wonderfully scented. It does taste quite strongly of bananas so next time, I think I will only use one and add a little bit of raw honey. Thank you~!

I just baked this cake for my baby’s first year as I wanted a no-sugar recipe for his first taste of cake. It worked really, really well!

I am amazed at how well fruit can sweeten a cake with using the refined ‘devil’!

OK I made a few small modifications: I blended the dates with a tiny bit of water and chopped the walnut to a powder, and also I skipped the hazelnuts on the topping (obviously to avoid choking risks); I grated lime and sprinkled the zest instead (some of the kids didn’t like the lemony flavour though…)

Initially I thought it hadn’t risen enough compared to the cakes from other standard recipes but it wasn’t too heavy or stodgy at all. That said when I bake this cake again I might use a self-raising flour.

Anyway, this is a very lovely take on carrot cake which I will stick to in the future. Thank you!!!

Hello, so i really love all of your sweet stuff and i really LOVE bananas, But now my boyfriend seems to be allergic… it’s a complete disaster! So in this cake (and all your other fabulous recipes) … with what could I replace the bananas…. Can you help me out here? i’m kinda lost now :-)

Have you ever had carrot cake in your life? This is honestly digusting, you don’t even taste the carrots and the spices are barely their, just a mess. Healthy it may be but tasty it is not. AND the glaze DOES NOT even glaze. Disappointing.

Hi Emily, I am very sorry you didn’t like it. This is a quite old recipe of ours so it was quite some time since I last made it. Since it doesn’t have sugar, it is of course less sweet than a traditional cake, but disgusting seems like a strong word of choice? It does have a quite high ratio of carrots so if you cant taste them it was perhaps a bad batch of carrots?
Anyway, thank you for the feedback and we are, again, really sorry that you didn’t like it. We will give this a try again and see if we think something needs to be changed in the recipe.
/D&L

Hi! Is this cake best served soon after it’s been cooked or better when a day after or so? I know things like ginger cake get even yummier with time! I want to make this for my mums birthday and don’t know whether to make it the day before on her actual birthday.

Omg amazing cake.. Only problem is I want to eat it all in one go!!! Substituted one egg for 2tbs applesauce as only had 2 eggs, replaced cardamom with ginger, used dried dates instead of fresh which I soaked for a couple of hours, used 1/4 cup shredded coconut instead of the flakes (didn’t have any flakes ay home!) and substituted sunflower oil with coconut oil. Delish!!

Made this cake and the taste was awesome. A bit dense though but maybe fruit cakes are supposed to be a bit more dense than the fluffy cakes we’re used to. Will keep this recipe and will definitely make it again and again.
Only 1 question: it took me 30 minutes longer to have it completely baked, anyone else had the same problem?

I’ve just made this and its great! No fresh dates but chopped dried ones worked well ( didn’t see hint to soak them until too late), didn’t have coconut flakes so doubled up on raisins. And no topping as counting calories but it still tasted great. Tip – protect with foil towards the end of cooking so it doesn’t brown too much.

Great recipe! I had joy making your carrot cake today and everyone loved it. I was not caring much about food before I discovered your blog and apps. You made me like cooking and eating healthy! Thank you for sharing!